PCWorld: Is Linux Ready for the Living Room?

“Japan’s two largest consumer electronics companies, Matsushita
Electric Industrial, better known as Panasonic, and Sony have begun
joint development of a version of the Linux operating system for
digital consumer electronics devices, they said Wednesday.

“The announcement stands to speed the entry of Linux into the
consumer electronics space, where it already has begun to make
inroads–not just because Japan’s top two players will be jointly
working on the system but also because they have secured basic
support from a number of other major consumer electronics
makers.

“‘Linux itself is very good and a well accepted operating system
but it has some points that need to be overcome for it to be
applied to digital consumer electronics products such as the
start-up time or real time performance,’ said Shinji Obana, a
spokesperson for Tokyo’s Sony. ‘These examples could be said to be
short-comings of Linux so we are going to develop [the OS]
further…'”

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